Posts Tagged ‘Luddites’

You Won’t Believe This, But… (Revisiting My Luddite Self)

Friday, February 14th, 2014

I wrote the following limerick in response to a personal request from Ralph Nader. And yes, I know that sounds crazy. So please allow me to explain:

Over twenty years ago, the New York Times Sunday Business section published my serious personal essay about technology in the workplace. My column, entitled “When Executives Should Just Say No,” dealt with the downside of technological advances. I concluded it with these questions:

Does that the 7:00 p.m. message really merit an immediate response? Is keeping staff hooked to computers all night a sensible use of personnel? And perhaps most important: Am I using these machines? Or are they using me?

My piece attracted a fair amount of attention, including radio interviews, a Boston Globe interview, and a reprint request from Pushcart Press’s Bill Henderson for his anthology “Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club.”

So, what does this have to do with Ralph Nader? It seems that Nader, a fan of that anthology when it was first published, has recently re-read it. And he’s sent personal letters to its contributors, asking us to re-read our respective pieces and send him updated thoughts on the topic, for an article he’s working on.

Instead of a prose response, I decided to express my updated views via limerick. So here’s what I sent to Ralph Nader:

In a decades-old piece, I once warned
With a Luddite’s distrust, unadorned,
Of technology’s lure;
Folks were duped, I was sure.
Now I’m one of those people I scorned.

High-Tech Limerick

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

I hope you’ll join me in writing a limerick with this first line:

A woman who hated high tech…

Here’s mine:

High-Tech Limerick
By Madeleine Begun Kane

A woman who hated high tech
Found computers a pain in the neck.
Whether Mac or PC,
How that gal longed to flee
Back five decades — a time machine trek.

Please feel free to write your own limerick using the same first line and post it in my comments. And if you’re on Facebook, I hope you’ll join my friends in that same activity in my Limerick-Offs.

Luddite Limerick

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Luddite Limerick
By Madeleine Begun Kane

A hard-working author named Fink
Insisted on writing with ink.
He hated computers
And called them polluters.
Some claim he’s our long Missing Link.

By the way, in addition to being a recovering lawyer, I’m a recovering luddite and recovering technophobe.  In fact,  the first anthology my essays ever appeared in was Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club: Second Thoughts on the Electronic Revolution.

(Feel free to write your own limerick using the same first line and post it in my comments. And if you’re on Facebook, please join my friends in that same activity in my limerick-offs.)